Energy Efficiency of Android Architectural Patterns: A Scenario-Based Study

Abstract – Battery capacity remains a critical constraint for mobile applications, yet the energy impact of architectural design decisions remains largely unexplored. While previous studies have compared Android architectural patterns in terms of testability and performance, comprehensive evaluations of energy consumption across different usage scenarios are still lacking. Therefore, we systematically compare the energy efficiency of five Android architectures: MVC, MVP, Classic MVVM, Single-State MVVM, and MVI. By applying Clean Architecture principles and using identical Jetpack Compose UI components, we implemented normalized versions of each pattern and measured energy consumption with Android's BatteryManager API. We evaluated three realistic scenarios: chat streaming, shopping cart management, and product browsing. Our findings indicate that no single architecture is universally optimal, as scenario-specific workload characteristics determine energy efficiency. While MVC demonstrates better overall efficiency and performs better in chat streaming and shopping scenarios, MVI provides the best performance in UI-intensive product browsing. With Android's ecosystem of over 3 billion devices, this underscores the substantial sustainability implications of informed architectural decisions.